


tell me how this story ends

by hi_raeth



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Modern AU, Soulmate AU, bonus appearances from rose phasma han and leia, reyloweek2018, stay for bonus bbs at the end, tiny bit of angst in the middle but don't worry it ends with fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-28
Updated: 2018-04-28
Packaged: 2019-04-29 04:07:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14464659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hi_raeth/pseuds/hi_raeth
Summary: In a world where you have to earn your soulmate, Rey has spent the last two years waiting for the day she and Kylo wake up with each other’s marks, waiting for the day the universe tells them they’re meant to be. The mark never shows up, but even the knowledge that they’re just not meant for each other doesn’t make their break up any easier on Rey.Nearly three years later, Kylo suddenly reappears in her life with a request to help him become the man he once was, the man Rey has always secretly suspected to be her true soulmate.





	tell me how this story ends

**Author's Note:**

> This is for Day 6 of Reylo Week 2018. Today's prompt is 'soulmates', with a sub-prompt for 'identifying marks'. 
> 
> Title taken from Arcade Fire's _Headlights Look Like Diamonds_.

Rey’s third year of college gets off to a spectacularly bad start, and it’s all thanks to her two best friends finding out they’re soulmates.

It’s not that she isn't happy for Finn and Poe because she _is_ – she’s seen this coming for years, and they really do fit each other perfectly. If it hadn’t been for the… collateral damage, she’d probably be over the moon for her friends right now. But the fact is that Finn, completely oblivious to his connection with Poe, had started dating her roommate less than two months into their first year of college, and now Rey finds herself trying desperately to comfort an inconsolable Rose Tico in a bar on a Tuesday night.

“It’s not even that I’m not happy for them,” Rose hiccups, downing the last of some electric blue cocktail Rey has yet to learn the name of. “Because it just… it makes sense, you know? If the theory about earning each other and _becoming_ soulmates is correct, then I see it. They’ve always been so close, but then summer happened and I was gone and they had all that _time_ together…” She chokes out a sob, shoulders shaking as she falls forward into Rey’s arms.

Rey, who isn’t the best at comforting people, who doesn’t know the first thing about having your heart broken, who absolutely _hates_ all of this soulmate bullshit. “It’s okay, honey,” she rests her chin on top of Rose’s head and hopes the way she’s patting her distraught friend’s back is at least some source of comfort. “I know you wish them well, but it’s okay to be hurt and angry. You don’t deserve this, Rose. This is just… bullshit, all of it. Where do the fates get off, ruining perfectly good relationships just because they think they have a better idea?”

“It really _was_ a perfect relationship,” Rose wails into her shoulder, and for what has to be the tenth time this evening, Rey winces and wonders how the fuck she of all people had ended up being the one to comfort Rose. At least Paige is on her way to spend the week with her little sister, but until the older Tico arrives Rose is stuck with Rey and her pathetic attempts at being a supportive friend.

As Rose mourns all the plans and dreams she’d so carefully come up with over the past two years, Rey casts her eyes about to make sure no one they know is watching her roommate break down in public. The next few weeks will be hard enough without some asshole classmates constantly reminding her of the break up or mocking her for crying about it.

There are no familiar faces, thankfully, and nearly everyone there is too caught up in their own business to so much as look Rose’s way, but right at the end of the bar Rey’s eyes snag on someone already looking at her.

The man momentarily drops his gaze to Rose before giving Rey an empathetic look, one that holds all the discomfort she’s internally dealing with right now. It’s not that she doesn’t love Rose, and it’s definitely not that she doesn’t want to do everything within her power to make things better. But growing up bounced around from one home to another, with no actual friends until she met Finn at age fifteen, means that Rey is woefully inexperienced when it comes to dealing with emotional humans other than herself. And Rose is nothing if not an emotional human, even on the best of days; Rey should’ve known that someone with the capacity for such joy would also be capable of immense grief.

Rose pulls away then, and Rey acknowledges the stranger with a nod before she turns her attention back to her friend. “I’m sorry,” Rose says, snagging a napkin from the bar to wipe away her tears and blow her nose. “I know it’s got to be hard for you to be trapped in the middle of all this, but I’m so grateful you’re here, Rey. It means a lot to me.”

“I’ll always be here,” Rey assures her. “Even if… even if you two can’t stay friends after this, I’ll still be here for you, okay?” Finn is drowning in guilt and Rose is the sweetest person she knows, so at least neither of them would make her pick a side even if they go their separate ways after this.

Eyeing Rose’s empty glass, Rey turns to get the bartender’s attention. It’ll be her fourth drink tonight, but even if she does get drunk Paige will be there to take care of her. Besides, Rose will probably be grateful for a distraction in the morning, even if it comes in the form of a hangover.

Before she can flag down the bartender, however, she appears with a new round for both of them. “Courtesy of my friend over there,” the woman tells them, pointing out the man Rey had noticed earlier. “He knows what it’s like to go through a rough night.”

The man is studiously avoiding them – sure, he _could_ just be busy with his phone right now, but something tells Rey that’s not the case – but Rose doesn’t let that stop her. “Hey! Hey, bartender’s friend!” she hollers, and Rey starts to reconsider allowing her to have a fourth drink.

The bartender merely leans back and watches with an amused glint in her eyes as her friend is forced to drop his act and look up.

“Thank you, nice stranger!” Rose says, raising her glass at him. The man’s lips twitch with a smile, and he raises his own glass in return, nodding at them before he goes back to his phone once more. Rey thinks maybe he was looking directly at her when he nodded, but she can’t be sure.

“Thanks,” she tells the bartender once Rose has settled down and is happily sipping at her drink. “And sorry about my friend. She’s just…”

“Drinking her sorrows away?” the woman supplies knowingly. “We’ve all been there. I’m Phasma, by the way.”

It’s an unusual name but then again, this is an unusual bar. There’s a reason they’re here in this fancy, overpriced place instead of their usual spot, and it’s because no one in their social circle would ever set foot in a hipster bar. “I’m Rey,” she says, holding her hand out with a smile. “And that’s Rose.”

“Nice to meet you,” Phasma shakes her hand firmly. “And that,” she points at her friend, “is Kylo. In case you were wondering,” she shrugs.

“Right,” Rey says faintly, her eyes lingering on the man a tad too long. She quickly turns away just as he begins to lift his head. “Um, thanks again,” she tells Phasma, and the woman flashes her one last smile before she gets back to work.

Rey turns back to Rose, and they spend a good hour trash-talking the soulmate system and cursing the fates for being such busybodies. Occasionally, when Rose lapses into a moment of silence, Rey finds herself looking at the man – Kylo. He’s still there, and every time she turns to look at him he catches her in the act. After the third time she offers him a sheepish smile, one he returns with a smile of his own. The sight of his lips slowly curving into something promising warms her in a way even the alcohol doesn’t.

Eventually Paige arrives to pick up her sister, and Rey isn’t the slightest bit surprised when Kylo approaches her as soon as the Ticos are gone.

“Is it okay if I sit here?” he asks, the slightest note of uncertainty in his voice belying his confident mask.

He’s incredibly tall, she realizes with a jolt, and even more interesting to look at up close. Rey’s not even going to pretend to be coy; she’s already out late on a school night, might as well get some fun out of it. “Sure,” she tells him with a smile, gesturing to Rose’s abandoned seat. “I’m Rey.”

“Kylo,” he offers in return, holding out his hand once he’s seated. His skin is warm to the touch, and the way her hand is utterly dwarfed by his puts the oddest thought into her head: _this man will swallow you whole._

It feels like a prophecy, like a warning, like the fates trying to meddle in her business the way they do with everyone else’s.

Rey ignores all of it and goes home with him that night.

 

* * *

 

She sneaks out the next morning while he’s sleeping, and that should be that.

But then they start running into each other literally everywhere – the library where she works, the hole-in-the-wall place she gets takeout from, even the rarely-used trail she prefers for her morning runs.

Eventually, it gets too ridiculous to ignore. “This feels like a sign, doesn’t it?” Kylo asks when they find each other in line at a food truck on campus, one month after they first met.

“Fucking universe can’t keep its nose out of our business,” Rey mutters as Kylo’s shoulder bumps into hers. “At least it’s better than those death sentences,” she sighs, digging through her pockets for change.

“You mean soulmate marks?” He sounds amused, which is the total opposite of the horror Rey usually faces when she shares her less than favorable thoughts on something most people hold sacred. They find themselves at the front of the line before she can reply, and Kylo gestures for her to go first. He jumps in and adds his order before Rey can hand over her fistful of crumpled-up dollar bills, and ignores her protests as he pays for both their orders.

“Look,” Kylo tells her patiently, quieting her complaints as he places a hand on the small of her back to guide her away from the truck. “If the universe is throwing us together for a reason, I don’t really mind. I had a good time with you the other night, and clearly you’re as much of a believer in soulmate marks as I am so really, I have no complaints.”

“Wait, you hate the marks too?” Rey asks, the small matter of repayment forgotten as Kylo hands over her food and leads her to a nearby bench.

He shrugs, unwrapping his sandwich. “I wouldn’t say _hate_ , but I’m definitely not a big fan of them. I’ve seen them in action up close and I’m just not convinced, you know?”

“They seem to be working out for the people I know,” Rey says after the first bite of her burger. “But it all feels so unnecessary to me. Why can’t we just figure things out ourselves? And sometimes it seems like they cause more hurt than anything. Remember my friend, the one I was with the night we met?”

“Soulmate match gone wrong?” Kylo guesses, not the least bit surprised. She’s never actually known soulmates who didn’t eventually work out, but there are stories out there of the occasional match ending in flames.

“No, just the fates fucking a perfectly great person over,” she huffs. “She’d been dating my other friend, Finn, for almost two years, and they were ridiculously happy together. Like ‘disgustingly in love, most likely to get married after college’ happy. And then one day Finn found out he’s soulmates with his best friend, and suddenly Rose was left with nothing.”

Kylo makes a noise of sympathy, occupied with his food for the moment. “How’s it working out for Finn and his buddy?” he asks a moment later.

“Surprisingly well,” Rey grudgingly admits. “I’ve kinda always known they were meant to be though, so no surprises there. But it would have been nice of the fates to either let them know from the beginning or just stay out of it and let them figure it out in a less painful way, you know? I’m happy for them, but why did Rose have to go through that?”

“Wouldn’t that be even more of a death sentence, though?” Kylo wonders, turning to her. “If we were all just born with marks,” he clarifies. “Imagine growing up your whole life feeling like you can’t date anyone else because you’ve got your soulmate’s name right there, so what’s the point even if you’re in love with someone? And wouldn’t it suck, not knowing your soulmate at all? What if you finally meet them and they turn out to be a total asshole, but you can’t do anything about it because you’re meant to be and all that?”

Rey stares at him until Kylo ducks his head and makes a show of focusing on his sandwich. Clearly he’s put some thought into this. “Yeah,” she says after a while. “Yeah, that would suck too. See, this is what I mean. Aren’t we all just better off without the marks? Say you and I decide to date, and we end up being really happy together – why can’t that be enough? Even if we suddenly get our marks and it’s someone else, why can’t we just be happy with what we have instead of breaking each other’s hearts for the slightest possibility that someone else could make us happier?”

Now it’s his turn to stare at her, and Rey finds herself fiddling with the edge of her burger wrapper as she waits for him to respond. “Would you do that, though?” Kylo asks, his voice unusually soft. “Would you give up a sure thing – a perfect match – to fight for what you’ve already got in hand, even though there’s no guarantee it’ll last the way soulmate bonds do?”

As a child, Rey was fascinated with the idea of soulmates, with the idea of having at least one person who’s supposed to stay with you forever. _A sure thing,_ Kylo calls it, and of course some part of her craves the stability of that, the assurance of something known and permanent. But– “I don’t think I could ever walk away from someone I love, soulmate or not,” she tells him quietly, thinking of the longing glances Finn and Rose still exchange sometimes, of the way some feelings don’t ever leave you. She’d regret it for the rest of her life, if she had to walk away from someone without knowing how things would have turned out otherwise.

“Yeah,” Kylo says, just… looking at her. “Yeah, I see what you mean,” he shakes it off and gives her a grin. “I’d much rather be thrown together like this than wear a _death sentence_ on my skin.”

Rey laughs when he playfully bumps his shoulder against hers. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but Kylo would’ve been a weird name to have on me anyway.”

He shrugs and finishes up what’s left of his sandwich, balling the wrapper up and tossing it into the bin next to them before he speaks. “I don’t know if that’s even what it would say, actually.”

“What do you mean?” Rey frowns, digging through her bag for a bottle of water to wash down her lunch. “What else would it say if not your name?”

“My birth name, maybe,” Kylo answers, a study in fake nonchalance as he takes the bottle she’s offering him and turns away from her as he drinks.

“Kylo Ren isn’t your–” Rey starts before she rolls her eyes at herself. “ _Of course_ Kylo Ren isn’t your real name. Why am I even surprised?” She waits for him to turn back to her before asking, “So what’s your actual name? You know, so that I don’t wake up one day and think I’ve been matched up with some asshole of a stranger.”

“You’d still be stuck with an asshole,” he smirks, letting out a cross between a gasp and a surprised laugh when Rey slaps him on the arm. “It’s, um, it’s Ben Solo. Just in case.”

One hand moves to runs through his hair while he angles his body away from her. Rey can’t tell whether he’s nervous to run with her implication of them possibly being soulmates or uncomfortable with sharing such a personal detail. “That’s a nice name,” she offers quietly, leaning forward to catch his eye and give him a smile.

“I don’t really like it,” Kylo mumbles, avoiding her eyes.

There’s a story there, in the way his shoulders have gone tense, in the way he tugs at his hair and restlessly taps his right foot and curls his hands into fists. Rey decides it’s a story for some other day, if they make it that far.

“Okay, Kylo,” she says, pulling out her phone. “Now give me your number. If anyone’s going to be planning our next run-in, I’d rather it be us than the fates.”

They have their second date – _I paid for your food_ and _I told you uncomfortably personal stuff, it totally counts as a first date_ – later that week, and by the time winter rolls around they’re officially together.

And at some point between Christmas and New Year’s, Rey finds herself thinking she wouldn’t mind too much if the fates _do_ decide to make him her soulmate after all.

 

* * *

 

Kylo speaks rarely and briefly about Ben Solo, about the man he used to be, but it’s enough for Rey to realize that he isn’t as dead as Kylo would like him to be.

He’s there in the way Kylo’s eyes go soft when they see her, in the way he comforts her on her so-called birthday – the day she was found, not born –, in the way he automatically tucks errant locks of hair behind her ear and always makes sure she’s eaten no matter how busy he is and holds her in their sleep even though he runs too warm to find cuddling comfortable.

“I just don’t understand how you can like _Kylo Ren_ ,” Finn huffs in exasperation the day she tells her friends about their relationship. There’s history there, a brief overlap in their internships at some place called the First Order, and the man Finn describes to her sounds nothing like the man she knows, so much so that Rey begins to wonder if she’s even in a relationship with Kylo Ren at all.

She never calls him Ben, never reveals any of her thoughts to him, but privately Rey starts to think maybe the man she knows is Ben Solo after all. _Just in case_ , Kylo had said all those months ago when he gave her his true name, but with every passing day Rey grows more certain that the only name that could ever belong on her skin is Ben.

And that’s another can of worms entirely, the fact that she’s started actively wanting a mark – _his_ mark. They’ve spoken of it only once since that day on the bench, when Kylo told her about his parents and how the mark made it so that they couldn’t live without each other but their personalities made it such that they couldn’t live with each other. It’s the reason he’s not totally sold on the concept, the reason he’d rather have her than a mark, but why can’t he have both? Why can’t they have each other for good?

On their first anniversary, Rey decides she’ll bring it up, just casually float the idea that maybe they could start waiting for their marks the way most couples do. It won’t actually change anything or speed up the process, but she thinks she’s ready for Kylo to know how she feels about him, about them.

But then– “Hey,” Kylo says tiredly, stumbling into the apartment that’s only recently gone from being his to theirs. He’s paler than ever, hair a mess and clothes all wrinkled, the bags under his eyes worse than those Rey sees on students camped out in the library during finals week.

Immediately, she knows he’s spent the day juggling classes and Snoke’s errands.

“Babe,” Rey sighs, meeting him at the door to help him set his things down and shrug off his jacket. “You can’t keep going like this. You’re going to work yourself into the ground.”

Kylo pulls her close and rests his chin on top of her head. “It’s just another year,” he mumbles into her hair. “Once I have my master’s, Snoke will finally offer me a permanent position and we’ll be set.”

She loves that he’s thinking about _their_ future and not just his, but Rey wishes Snoke and his awful company didn’t have to be a part of it. Kylo is insistent though, says he’s known he belongs at First Order ever since he first interned for them the summer before college, says he owes everything about the man he is today to Snoke.

“But does he have to take advantage of you like this in the meantime?” Rey asks, leading him to the kitchen. “You’re not even working for him right now, and he still has you doing a million things a day. You’re in grad school, Kylo. You don’t have time for this.”

It’s an old argument – the only one they ever have, really – and she knows he’s just as tired of it as she is. “Can we not do this tonight, please?” Kylo murmurs, brushing his lips across her temple. “I’m exhausted, and I just want to spend what little time we have before I fall asleep celebrating our anniversary.”

“Okay,” Rey relents, carding her fingers through his hair as he leans down to rest his head on her shoulder. “Okay, not tonight. C’mon, I got us dinner.”

He’s the chef between the two of them, so her idea of preparing dinner is just getting all their favorite takeout dishes. Kylo smiles at the sight and mumbles _this is great, thank you_ against her lips anyway, and after dinner they manage to hang out on the couch for a whole thirty minutes before he starts dozing off.

She brushes her teeth while he’s in the shower, mainly just to make sure he doesn’t fall asleep on his feet. Kylo’s in bed by the time she’s dressed, and he apologizes constantly and profusely for ruining the evening. “I’ll make it up to you,” he promises, reaching out to draw Rey into his arms. “We can do anything you want this weekend.”

“I just want to be together,” she murmurs, brushing hair out of his face before resting her hand on his cheek. “We’ve both been so busy lately, it feels like we haven’t spent any time together since school started.”

Kylo winces. “I’m sorry, sweetheart,” he turns and presses a kiss to her palm. “I’ll make the time, I promise.” His words are beginning to run together, and he punctuates his promise with a yawn.

“I know,” Rey smiles, running her hand through his hair. “Go to sleep now, Kylo. You need it.”

He kisses her good night and shifts his head so that it’s cradled between her neck and shoulder, and Rey holds him close as his breathing evens out and his form grows soft and pliant in her arms, the stress of the day leaking out of his tense frame. She doesn’t get much sleep that night, thinking about Kylo and Ben, about Kylo and Snoke, about Kylo and her.

When he wakes in the morning his dark circles are even more pronounced in the light of day, and Rey watches in quiet concern as he stumbles bleary-eyed and sleep-deprived through his morning routine, barely stopping for a piece of toast before he’s reaching for his things.

She can’t let him go on like this, can’t let him head into another busy day just like all the others, and so Rey finds herself reaching for him before he can leave the kitchen.

“I love you,” she tells Kylo, the first time she’s ever done so.

He smiles, the first sign of life she’s seen in him all morning, and all the stress and exhaustion on his face seems to melt away as his eyes light up. “I love you too,” Kylo murmurs right before he kisses her, his hands warm around her waist and his shoulders loose under her hands.

When they finally pull apart for air he looks at her for the longest time, opens his mouth to speak just as Rey blurts out, “I take back everything I ever said about not wanting a mark. I wish I had one. I wish I had yours.”

His smile grows dim, and Rey’s heart grows heavy. Being in love doesn’t necessarily equal wanting to be together forever, right? “I’m sorry, that was too much–” She moves to step out of Kylo’s arms, only for him to shake his head and tighten his grip on her.

“No, no, that’s not–” He sighs and leans down to press his forehead to hers, both of their eyes fluttering shut at the soothing gesture. “I wish you had my mark too,” Kylo whispers right before he kisses her again.

Later, once he’s gone and she’s getting ready for the day, Rey gives in to the silly urge to check her reflection in the mirror before she gets dressed, just a cursory sweep for anything new. It just feels like the time is right, like everything has fallen into place, like they’re finally on the same page the way soulmates are supposed to be.

It becomes a daily routine, one that she keeps up even long after things are over.

 

* * *

 

Two weeks before graduation, everything goes wrong.

Maybe it’s Rey’s fault, maybe she’s destroyed them by constantly seeking out things that aren’t there, by searching for glimpses of Ben the way she desperately studies her own reflection each morning.

Maybe in trying to secure their future she’s completely destroyed their present, but the same could easily be said of Kylo.

“Rey, you don’t understand! Look at the starting salary!” Kylo picks up the letter she’d found on their coffee table just minutes ago, the letter she’d confronted him with. “Do you even understand what this could do for us? I could give you everything you deserve, everything we’ve ever wanted.”

“For fuck’s sake, I don’t care about the _money_ , Kylo,” she tells him for what feels like the millionth time, a scream of frustration lodged in her throat. “This man is going to use you until he _kills_ you, and I can’t bear to watch it!”

Kylo softens, and for one beautiful moment she thinks she’s won. “I’ll be fine, sweetheart,” he says, shattering the illusion in one fell swoop even as he steps forward to gently rest his hands on her neck. “I told you things will get easier once school is done and it’s just the job. I might have to put in a lot of hours for the first few years–” At this she steps away from him, but he keeps going anyway. “Snoke said it’s the fastest way to a promotion, and once that happens I’ll be able to take it slow–”

“Not if you _die_ first,” Rey snaps, crossing her arms over her chest. “He says jump and you ask how high, and he _knows_ it, Kylo. He’s been taking advantage of it for six years, and there’s no way he’s going to stop anytime soon. It just keeps getting _worse_ , and I’m so _worried_ , Ben–” A sob rises past her chest as tears pool in her eyes, clouding her vision so that she can’t see the scowl on his face.

“What did you just call me?”

It takes Rey a while to blink away her tears, to realize her mistake. “I just...” She shakes off her doubt and decides to go for it, to try the only option she has left. “I called you Ben, because that’s who you are to me. The man I love is kind, and gentle, and caring, and I won’t let Snoke change that, I won’t let him hollow you out and turn you into some kind of monster like him–”

Kylo’s face hardens, his eyes cold as he glares at her. “The man you love,” he says quietly, his hands forming fists at his side, “doesn’t exist, Rey. And if you’ve spent the last two years thinking… if you’ve spent all this time hoping… fuck, do you even know what love _is,_ Rey?”

“Of course I–”

“No,” Kylo cuts her off firmly. “No, you don’t. Love is about accepting someone the way they are, not trying to change them. And that’s why you’ll never get a mark, _sweetheart_ ,” he sneers, and finally, _finally_ , she sees the man Finn warned her about, “because you don’t even know what love is.”

“I _love_ you,” Rey insists, stepping forward to take his hand even when all she wants to do is flinch away from his cruel words. “I love you, and that’s why I can’t stand to see you this way, that’s why I’m trying to keep you away from Snoke–”

Kylo shakes his head. “You’re in love with a ghost, Rey, not me.” He doesn’t give her a chance to reply, snatches up his keys from the table and slams the door on his way out without so much as a goodbye.

Not that she would’ve been capable of a reply anyway, his accusation stinging like a slap to the face. And the worst part is that it’s true, isn’t it? Everything she loves about him she’s told herself is Ben, and everything she can’t stand she’s attributed to Kylo, to Snoke’s creation.

She goes to bed that night knowing she won’t get a wink of sleep, and when he finally comes back he slips under the covers wordlessly and turns his back to her. Neither of them sleep; neither of them speak.

There’s nothing left to say, nothing other than perfunctory pleasantries and the occasional question about misplaced items.

The day before graduation, Kylo grabs some leftovers she’s set out on the kitchen counter and joins her at the table. They eat in silence, as they have for the past two weeks, until he sets his food down and looks at her.

“I took the job,” he says, and it takes all her effort not to let her fork clatter to the ground. She nods, makes some kind of sound in acknowledgement, and pushes her barely-touched plate away.

Kylo stares at her for the longest time, and then he sighs. “It’s over, isn’t it?” he asks, and more than anything it’s the resignation in his voice that breaks her.

A cry rips past her throat, and Rey claps a hand to her mouth as she starts sobbing in earnest, her shoulders shaking and her lungs short of breath and everything, _everything_ hurts with the knowledge that there’s no fixing this, that Kylo won’t even try to fix this.

His chair scrapes against the floor as he gets up to cross the table, and she doesn’t even have it in her to fight when he picks her up and holds her close. They slide down to the floor, and he leans his back against the wall as she curls up in his arms and cries into his shoulder.

“Shh, it’s going to be okay, sweetheart,” he tells her, his voice thick with tears of his own. “You’re going to be okay. Maybe it’s for the best, maybe there’s a reason you never got my mark.”

She shakes her head at that, chokes on a sob at the reminder and tries to protest it. “No, listen to me, Rey,” Kylo moves, coaxes her to straighten up so that she’s looking at him. “You deserve so much better than me, okay? You deserve someone who won’t pick a stupid _job_ over you, and I’m so, so sorry I couldn’t be that person for you, sweetheart,” he whispers, his face wet with tears as he leans down to rest his forehead against hers one last time. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be the person you want me to be.”

“I’m sorry we weren’t enough,” Rey tells him in return, her voice small and shaky and unfamiliar to her own ears. She wishes, god how she wishes, she had never heard the name Ben Solo to begin with, wishes she could have loved Kylo from the start, the good and the bad and everything in between.

But a part of her has always known, even from that first day, that she was never meant to wear _Kylo Ren_ on her skin. _He will swallow you whole_ , the universe had warned her, and in her arrogance she’d thought to defy the fates, to prove them wrong.

The day after graduation, when she wakes up to packed boxes and an empty apartment, she knows what it means to be swallowed whole, to be so consumed by love and regret and grief that nothing else exists anymore.

“I left two boxes on the dining table,” Kylo tells her quietly, his voice just as hoarse as hers from all the crying they’ve done in the last few days. “It’s all the stuff that we got together. I thought maybe…maybe you’d like to look through it and see what you want to keep.”

Two boxes. Nearly two years together and that’s all they have to show for the life they’d made, the life they’d shared.

Rey shakes her head, careful to avoid his eyes in the mirror as she gathers her toiletries. “You take it. Just… take all of it. You’ll have more space than me, anyway.”

“Right,” Kylo mutters. “Chandrila, right? It’s kinda known for shoebox apartments.”

It’s also where he was born, where his family lives, where she’s moving to work with his father.

“Yeah, things are gonna be pretty cramped,” Rey says weakly, slow to form the unfamiliar words shared between strangers, acquaintances at best.

Kylo nods and disappears from the mirror, and in the living room she hears him resume his task of separating their boxes into two distinct piles.

When she comes out of the bedroom with one last box in her hands, he’s taping the ones in the kitchen shut. She doesn’t move closer to inspect the contents, doesn’t say goodbye to what’s left of their life together.

Instead she sits on the couch, dazed and numb as he makes multiple trips down to the rental he’s parked outside their building, moving his life box by box away from their apartment. Her own boxes remain in a corner; Finn and Poe are coming by later with a truck, the truck they’ll use to drive her and her life to Chandrila.

Finally, there’s only one box left, one last trip upstairs.

She follows him to the door, barely aware of her own movements.

“Rey…”

Against all reason, she finds herself laughing through tears. “You know, I’m usually very good at saying goodbye,” she tells him.

“That’s… good?” Kylo asks, and the way his brow furrows in confusion is so painfully endearing, so achingly familiar, that it wipes all traces of humor off her face.

She shakes her head, a fresh wave of tears hitting her. “But I don’t know how to say goodbye to you,” Rey cries, allowing him to hold her. “I don’t know how to say goodbye forever to someone I love.”

A lifetime ago she’d told him she could never walk away from someone she loves, and now here they are.

“It’s okay, sweetheart,” Kylo murmurs, his lips brushing against her hair. “It’s going to be okay,” he says for both their sakes, even if neither of them believe it. For a while they stand right before the threshold of their old apartment, of their new lives, and they hold each other up.

When he pulls back to give her a reassuring smile, Kylo’s eyes are red. “I should get going,” he says, picking up the box he’d carelessly dropped to the ground to hold her. “I’m pretty sure I’m parked illegally, so–”

They linger - his eyes on her, her hands still around him, the air between them thick with a thousand things they’ll never get to say. 

“Okay,” Kylo says, nodding to himself. “Okay, I should go.”

Rey lets go of him just as he lets go of her, and they each take a step backwards to put some distance between them, the beginning of a great chasm.

“Take care of yourself, Kylo,” she pleads. _Now that I can’t anymore._

He nods and offers her a thin-lipped smile. “You too, Rey.”

And then she watches the man she loves walk away from her.

 

* * *

 

Sometimes life settles down just enough for Rey to forget how much she hates the meddlesome fates… only for a reminder to sucker punch her out of the blue.

It’s been two years since graduation, two years since she moved to Chandrila and started working at Han Solo’s garage. Maybe it’s a waste of her engineering degree, but it’s a good job, and it pays well, and maybe… maybe she’s just enough of a masochist that she craves the small reminders of Kylo she gets from being around his family so much.

If anyone asks though, it’s because Han’s shop specializes in restoring vintage cars and she loves getting the chance to work on them.

It’s the answer she gives Kylo the day she literally bumps into him in the garage.

She’s holding a loosely-capped bottle of motor oil, her face turned to the side to address Chewie, when she bumps into him and gets oil all over his shirt. It’s black, so it doesn’t really matter, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s soaked through.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry–”

And that’s when she sees him.

“Hi, Rey,” Kylo says, smiling at her as if he isn’t dripping motor oil, as if this isn’t the first time they’ve seen each other in two years.

She stutters out an apology, and then a comment on his shirt, and then an order to follow her to the back office where they keep a few spare tees, all the while painfully aware of Chewie’s eyes on them. Thank god Han is out getting lunch.

Kylo asks about her job while she digs through a drawer for a shirt that’ll fit him, and after she’s given her standard reply she hesitantly turns the same question on him.

“Oh, I, uh… I quit. Last week, actually.”

“You…” She turns around to face him, paint-stained shirt gripped tightly in her hands. “You quit your job?”

“Yeah,” Kylo drops his eyes to the ground and runs a hand through his hair, and her free hand twitches with the phantom impulse to do the same. “You… you were right. About Snoke, about the job, about everything. I guess it only took me two years to see that,” he mutters with a scowl.

“Better late than never,” Rey says for lack of something better, something thoughtful, something more suited to the fact that he’s finally quit the job that had torn them apart in the first place. She hands the shirt to him abruptly, her movements sudden and jerky. “I’ll just,” she turns her back to Kylo to give him some privacy, and remembers too late that the window in Han’s office is tinted and highly reflective.

She should close her eyes, she should squeeze them tight and count to twenty just in case, but… he’s got his back turned to her too, and he’ll never know, and she just… Rey doesn’t know what she’s thinking, but she can’t bring herself to close her eyes.

In the mirror-window, she watches him pull at the back of his shirt, watches his hair get caught in the bunched-up fabric to reveal the smallest glimpse of the back of his neck.

And there, on his nape, is the unmistakable sign of a mark.

His hair falls back down to cover it before Rey can even process her discovery, much less take a closer look, but she knows what she saw, knows that Kylo carries a name in solid black ink on the back of his neck.

And there it is, the sucker punch. The fates have brought him back into her life just long enough to show her that she was never meant for him, that all the time she’s spent hoping against hope to wake up with his mark on her is time that he’s spent earning someone else.

“So, um,” Kylo turns around. “I’m staying with my parents for a while, until I figure something out, and I was wondering if maybe–”

Is that why he finally quit his job? Because his _soulmate_ convinced him to?

“I have to go,” she croaks, already reaching for the door. “I’m sorry, I forgot something important, something…” Hot tears prick at her eyes, and Rey pulls the door open.

“Rey, is everything–”

She keeps her back to him. “I have to go,” Rey mumbles again, stepping out of the office and closing the door behind her. It only takes him seconds to open it and follow her out, but it’s enough to hide her from view as she dashes down the hallway and out the back door.

For the first time since she started working for Han, Rey decides to take some time off. When she gets back to work a week later she’s forced to explain everything to him, to come clean about the true nature of her relationship with his son where previously she’d only claimed a brief friendship, but at least Kylo’s long gone by then.

 

* * *

 

Months pass, but the hole that brief encounter tore in her doesn’t seem any closer to healing. The day he left her in their empty apartment Rey had bottled up all of her tears, all of her grief and pain and regret, because she had no intention of breaking down in front of his father.

Rey should have known that would come back to bite her in the ass someday.

Her life narrows down to work-hurt-sleep, rinse and repeat, and Rey ignores the voice inside her head that tells her she has no right to feel this way about him, about someone else’s soulmate.

So life goes on, and somehow she makes it all the way to December before Han decides to crash her pity party and burn it to the ground.

“It’s Christmas, and I know you don’t have any plans, so you’re coming to Leia’s party,” he announces one day, slapping an invitation down on her table.

“Han, thank you for inviting me but–”

“Nope. No buts. Either you come to the party, or Leia drags you to the party,” Han warns her, flashing her a triumphant grin when she gives in with a wordless nod.

Three days later she finds herself at Leia Organa’s Christmas party, a lively and crowded affair that threatens to suffocate her within her first thirty minutes of being there. Leia catches sight of her, pale and panicked, and ushers her to an upstairs balcony.

“Some air will be good for you,” she tells Rey, pressing a glass of wine into her hands. “And also this, to calm you down. Now you stay here as long as you need to, but I’d really like it if you could come down and socialize at some point, okay?”

She’s kind, and warm, and understanding, and Rey doesn’t understand how Kylo could ever have walked away from this family. She’s only met Leia a handful of times and already the woman treats her like family, has even been extra kind ever since she revealed the truth about her relationship with Kylo.

“Okay,” Rey says quietly, curling her fingers around the stem of the glass. “Thank you so much, Leia. I’m sorry for doing this here.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Leia frowns at her. “It’s my own damn party, and even I get overwhelmed by the crowd sometimes.”

They both know full well that’s not what’s happening here.

Leia pats her hand. “If you’re not down in an hour, I’ll come check on you and bring more wine, okay?” she offers, and with one last kind smile she leaves Rey alone.

So far removed from it all, Rey realizes that it’s probably really nice downstairs. It’s a big crowd but almost everyone knows each other, so much so that it feels more like a reunion than a party. The house is warm but not uncomfortably so, the decorations are beautiful without being over the top, and the company is all pleasant enough. It should have been the perfect opportunity for her to end her self-imposed isolation.

Instead, it just reminds her that even in a sea of people she has no one.

Finn and Poe are spending Christmas with the Damerons, and the Tico sisters are off backpacking around Europe for two months. She’s friends with Han and Chewie, of course, but how much of their friendship stems from her past with Kylo? Would Rey ever have applied for a job at Han’s garage if she hadn’t been desperate to find some way to help him reconnect with his parents?

 _This_ , she thinks to herself, _this is why you didn’t deserve to be his soulmate._

Kylo was never hers to fix, to redeem, to change. He was hers to love and support and encourage, but nothing more. Just like him quitting his job, her realization is about two years too late.

She loses track of time, up here on Leia’s balcony, all alone save for the stars, the universe, and the fates. When the door opens she assumes her hour is up and Leia is here to check on her and offer her more wine, but of course that’s not the case.

“Hi,” Kylo says, coming to sit down in the chair next to hers. He offers her a glass of wine. “My mom said she was supposed to bring this to you.”

“Thanks,” Rey mumbles, careful not to make even the slightest contact with his hand as she takes the glass from him. “I… I didn’t know you’d be here.”

“I wasn’t sure if I’d make it,” he tells her without meeting her eye. “I’ve kinda been all over the place these past few months, trying to figure out where I belong. Eventually I realized Chandrila will always be home, and so here I am.”

She feels sick – her heart is heavy and her stomach is churning and her mind is spinning. “So you’re moving here. For good?”

Kylo shrugs. “No concrete plans yet, but I think so.”

“That’s nice,” Rey murmurs absently, busying herself with her wine. “I’m sure Leia will be happy. And is your–” She stops herself in the nick of time, but it’s too late.

“Is my…?” Kylo prompts.

“Nothing,” she turns away from him completely and returns her focus to the stars. “Forget I said that.”

They lapse into silence, and when she finishes her second glass Kylo wordlessly offers her his own, the one he hasn’t touched at all. “Thanks,” she mutters, not even caring if she comes across as the distraught ex who has to drink her sorrows away in order to tolerate his presence.

Time passes – maybe another hour of it – with them just sitting there, cold and quiet and staring at the night sky. Finally, perhaps driven mad by the silence or encouraged by the alcohol in her bloodstream, Rey turns to Kylo.

“Who is she?” she asks, setting her glass down on the table between them. “If you don’t mind me asking, that is.”

Kylo meets her eyes with evident confusion in his. She’d forgotten that he doesn’t know she knows. “Who is who?”

But he has to know who she’s talking about, right? There’s only one _she_. “Your… you know,” Rey gestures at the back of her own neck.

His hand immediately flies to the back of his neck. “How did you–”

“I saw it when you were changing the other day. I’m sorry, I promise I didn’t mean to, the window is just really, really reflective and–”

“Rey, wait,” Kylo holds up a hand to put a stop to her babbling, his forehead creased with confusion. “What do you mean, _who is she_?”

“I saw the mark, but not the name,” Rey admits. “Look, if you don’t want to tell me it’s fine, I totally understand that, it’s not like I have a right to know or anything so,” she shrugs, keeping her eyes fixed on her empty wineglass while the weight of Kylo’s gaze burns her skin.

Kylo rests his hand on the table, mere inches away from hers. “But you do,” he whispers, drawing her attention. “You do have a right to know.” Before she can think of something to say, he’s turning around and lifting up his hair, and Rey has a split-second to decide whether she’s ready to see it with her own two eyes.

She should close her eyes, she _wants_ to close her eyes, but instead she finds herself staring at something incomprehensible, something impossible.

“When?” she whispers, her fingers hesitantly reaching out to trace the delicate letters printed behind Kylo’s neck.

He lets his hair fall, and she retracts her hand as he turns to face her. “Three months after we met,” he reveals quietly. “I woke up in the middle of the night because I felt something strange on my neck, and when I checked the next morning it was you.” Even after everything, he smiles at the memory.

“But why didn’t you tell me?” Rey can feel her breathing hitch, can hear how shaky her voice is, but there’s nothing she can do about the tears that have started to pool in her eyes. So many tears, endless tears for Kylo Ren, and she’s so sick of it but they keep coming anyway because again and again this man seems determined to tear her to pieces. “If you’d just said something–”

“At first I thought it would scare you,” he tells her, shaking his head with a rueful smile. “We’d only been dating for two months, and you’d made your feelings on this pretty clear. Later on, when you stopped ranting about the marks, I thought maybe you’d changed your mind for a reason, maybe you’d gotten it too or you would soon. So then I thought I’d wait for you to say something, because even after everything I was terrified that you wouldn't be happy about this.”

“And when… when I said I love you, and told you I wished…”

Kylo’s eyes fall close for a moment, and when he looks at her again there’s so much grief in them it pulls at its counterpart in her heart. “I’d had the mark for ten months by then. When you… when you told me you loved me, I thought maybe finally–” He shakes his head, blinks away the grief. “I started wondering why it was taking you so long to get the mark, but then I remembered how they work. Getting your mark meant that you were perfect for me, that you were everything, but the fact that you never got mine… I meant what I said, Rey: you deserve someone better than me. And that’s the real reason you never got my mark. I was never worthy of you.”

“But that’s not… that can’t be right,” Rey insists. In all her years she’s never heard of one-sided bonds. She’s heard of bonds that fade, of bonds that don’t work, but never of one half-formed.

“It’s the truth,” Kylo tells her. “As Kylo Ren, I was never going to be good enough for anyone, let alone you. Which is,” he pauses, sneaking a glance at her before he goes on, “which is why I’m here. I need your help, Rey.”

 _Anything_ , she wants to say. Even after everything, she’d do anything to help him. It’s only fair, given how she’d failed him the last time.

“What do you mean?” she asks him instead, holding herself back.

“I’ve been thinking about Ben Solo,” he confesses. “About the man I used to be, about the man I might someday become. I’ve been thinking about how little I know about him, and how hard it is to remember someone you never were. And then I thought about you.”

Rey stills. “Me?”

Kylo nods. “You know Ben Solo better than anyone else, Rey. And I was hoping that… that maybe you could teach me.”

“You… want me to help you become Ben Solo?” Wasn’t this everything she’d dreamed of, just two short years ago? She shies away from it now, flinches from the thought of trying _again_ to turn the man in front of her into someone he isn’t.

But he’s the one asking this time, he’s the one tentatively inching his hand closer to hers on the table and looking her in the eye. “Please, Rey. I’m not asking for forgiveness, or anything more from you. I just need your help to become Ben again.”

In his wide, earnest eyes, she sees a glimpse of the man she used to wake up to, of the man only she knew.

“Okay,” Rey hears herself saying against her better judgement, against all sense of self preservation. It’s been two years and still she hasn’t fallen out of love with the mere ghost of Ben Solo; how the hell is she supposed to survive resurrecting him?

She won’t, Rey knows. And yet – “Okay,” she tells him again, firmer this time.

He smiles. It’s a far cry from the sleepy smiles he used to greet her with in the mornings, but it’s genuine all the same.

 

* * *

 

They meet in a café somewhere between Leia’s office and Han’s shop two weeks later.

“It’s just,” Kylo struggles to explain what his plan is. “I don’t know how you did it, but you always brought out the best in me. So I thought maybe if we… I don’t know, hang out or something…”

 _Hang out_. The man has her name on his skin and her traitorous heart is back to spending every night praying she gets his on hers, and he thinks they can _hang out_.

“Okay,” Rey says, because what does she have to lose at this point?

They start slow, meeting every other day for lunch as he settles into his new job at Leia’s foundation. By his third week she’s convinced him to actually play nice with his colleagues, and to join Leia and Han for family dinner every Sunday.

The next week he decides to go to therapy of his own volition, to figure out some things about his childhood and his parents and his time with Snoke. She tells him she’s proud of him, and when they part ways she hugs him and almost feels like everything is okay again.

At night she lies awake thinking of the man she knows now, and she realizes it doesn’t matter to her whether it’s Kylo or Ben on her skin anymore. He just… he is who he is now. He’s growing into the person he was always meant to be, and it doesn’t really matter which name that person chooses to go by.

She tells him as much five weeks into their arrangement, finally sits down with him to have the talk they should have had all those years ago about the way she’d failed him, about the way she’d seen him being torn into two and had contributed to it rather than put a stop to it.

He holds her on a bench much like the one they had their first date on, tells her he never really blamed her for it, reminds her that despite it all she was good enough for the fates to mark him with her name anyway.

“Besides,” he says, rubbing soothing circles into her back as they watch the sunset, “if you look at this from Ben’s point of view instead of Kylo’s, you saved me. If I thought Ben was truly gone, I never would have been so conflicted about you, and I never would have found the courage to quit my job, and I never would have reached out to you for help. So really, the fates knew what they were doing when they gave me the mark. They knew I needed you.”

She doesn’t forgive herself overnight, but she does feel less guilty about hoping he’ll still be hers after everything they’ve gone through – not that she ever tells him that, not that she’ll ever tell him that. If, after everything is said and done, he chooses to move on from her, to go live his best life somewhere else with someone else… well, she’ll be damned if he lets something as stupid as a half-formed bond or some misplaced sense of gratitude or obligation or destiny hold him back.

But sometimes… sometimes she wonders if there’s a reason he’s working so hard to be the man she wanted him to be once.

Four months after that first meeting at the café, nearly three months of family dinners and therapy sessions later, she finds herself walking around town with Kylo on a Saturday afternoon. They hadn’t made plans or anything; they just… like being together. It reminds her of days whiled away in each other’s presence, of how the novelty of living together had never really worn off for them, of how they could be perfectly happy doing laundry or the dishes as long as they were together.

There’s that quiet sense of contentment now, weaving between them as they draw peace from each other’s presence, occasionally bumping shoulders as they walk around.

At some point their hands graze and they meet each other’s eyes sheepishly, and Rey darts her eyes away in search of a distraction only to find–

“Kylo, look!” she gasps, turning back to him with a wide smile.

A fond smile tugs at his own lips as he stares at her, his eyes bright and warm, and after a while he takes her hand and says, “Actually, I’ve been thinking… I think I’m ready to be Ben again.”

It’s been a while since she last cried over Ben Solo, but if she still had tears for him she’d probably shed a few now. Instead she laces their fingers together and, like she had on that bench all those years ago, she simply says, “Okay, Ben.”

He smiles at her, and it takes Rey a good while to remember what it is she’d been so eager to show him. “Now come on, we need to go see those puppies!”

“What puppies?” Ben asks as she tugs him across the street and towards the park, laughing at her excitement when she heads straight for a playpen set up in the middle of the adoption drive they’ve apparently stumbled upon.

Rey drags him down to kneel on the grass with her, and sticks her free hand in between the bars of the playpen. Most of the puppies are occupied with the children on the other side of the pen, but two tiny ones – one a golden, almost orange, color and the other black – rush to her immediately.

“Ben, look!” Rey giggles as the pups lick at her ticklish palm. “They like me!”

“Everyone likes you,” he points out with a grin, placing his own free hand within the pen. The orange puppy remains fully focused on Rey, but to his surprise the black one comes over to sniff at his hand and proceeds to nuzzle into it.

“I see you’ve found the last two BBs,” a woman says as she approaches them with a clipboard. “We’ve been hoping to find a nice couple to adopt them together, so that they don’t have to be separated,” she hints.

“Oh, we’re… um,” Ben turns to her with a question Rey isn’t quite ready to answer.

“We’re just here to play,” Rey tells the woman. “They’re really cute though. You called them BBs?”

The woman nods, kneeling down alongside them. “That’s how we labelled the whole litter. This one here,” she reaches in to scratch behind the orange one’s ear, “is BB-8, the eighth in his litter. And that little cutie is his sister and the youngest, BB-9.”

“Where are BBs 1 to 7?” Rey asks, glancing at the puppy pile on the other end of the pen to see if she can spot the rest of the litter.

“Oh, they’re long gone. See, they’re purebred, so they were snapped up pretty early. But I’m afraid Mama BB got a little frisky last mating season,” the woman chuckles. “These two are a little younger than the others, and they’re only half-siblings. We haven’t been able to pin down what their dad is, so it’s been a bit harder to find a home for them.”

“Poor BBs,” Rey murmurs as the woman excuses herself to tend to a family. She turns to see Ben absent-mindedly scratching BB-9’s chin with a small smile on his face as he looks around the park, and her mind is made up. “Ben… we have to. Look at them! They’re all they’ve got in this world. We can’t let them be separated.”

Ben stares at her. She stares back at him. The BBs start yelping for attention.

“Okay,” he sighs, and that’s how they end up with puppies.

 

* * *

 

A week later, Rey and BB-8 are over at Ben’s place for the puppies’ almost-daily playdate. The BBs tire each other out within the first hour, and are happy to cuddle up together in a corner of the living room and nap.

It’s been a very long, very exhausting first week of puppy parenting, and even as Ben puts on a movie Rey can tell she won’t last long. With the puppies happily dozing in a corner and Ben’s familiar warmth pressed up against her, she finds herself drifting off just minutes into the movie.

When Rey wakes a while later the TV is on mute, the puppies are still sleeping, and Ben has moved them so they’re stretched out along the length of the couch, his arm curled around her waist to keep her on top of him and away from the edge. For the longest while Rey can’t figure out exactly why she’s woken up, but then she feels it again.

An odd, tingling sensation on the back of her neck, only mildly uncomfortable but life-changing enough to wake her up. With her heart pounding and her throat dry, Rey carefully extricates herself from Ben’s arms and slowly tiptoes to his bathroom.

BB-9 wakes to find her making her way down the hall, but quickly goes back to sleep after a little yawn.

In the bathroom, Rey splashes cold water on her face and takes several deep breaths before she lifts her hair up in one hand. Slowly, very slowly, she cranes her neck this way and that to get a glimpse.

She spies familiar handwriting from a lifetime ago, from little love notes scrawled on post-its and grocery lists stuck to the fridge.

Rey runs back into the living room, waking both the puppies and Ben as she practically launches herself into his arms. “Babe, look!” she calls out in her excitement, speeding up the process by shaking him awake. The puppies have gathered at the foot of the couch, letting out tiny little barks as they get swept up in Rey’s contagious excitement.

“Rey, what–”

She wastes no time in presenting the back of her neck to him, sweeping her hair aside as Ben slowly pulls himself upright and moves in for a closer look.

“Is this…” One hand hovers uncertainly above her neck. “Rey, is this–” She shivers when his hand finally makes contact, when he traces the mark with a shaky finger.

There, on the back of her neck, is the matching _Ben_ to his _Rey_.

Rey waits for him to drop his hand before she turns around. “Tell me you still want this, Ben,” she whispers, searching his eyes. “Tell me you still love me.”

“Oh, sweetheart,” Ben smiles, one hand reaching up to cup her cheek while the other rests on the back of her neck, his thumb stroking the mark. “I never stopped.”

And finally – for the first time in years, for the first time in her life – Rey kisses her soulmate.

**Author's Note:**

> Every time. Every damn time I tell myself I'm gonna stick to my projected word count, I'm gonna keep a tight leash on the fic. And every damn time I end up subjecting you guys to god knows what.
> 
> As usual, I'm sorry, thanks for reading, and if you liked it please don't hesitate to leave a comment. I love y'all, you're so encouraging and supportive of my verbose bullshit.


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